Will Schmaltzy 'Benjamin Button' Win Oscar's Top Prize?

Feb. 19, 2009— -- Schmaltz is due a return at the Oscars.

After the award for best picture went to Scorsese's gangster epic, "The Departed," in 2007 and the Coen brothers' brilliantly suspenseful "No Country For Old Men" last year, one of the front-runners for this year's star prize is "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button."

Directed by David Fincher, "Button" is the tale of a man called Benjamin -- played by Brad Pitt -- who is born old but grows younger and, along the way, finds love.

The plot runs from the end of World War I to 2005. Doing so takes almost three hours, which may just help secure the prized Academy Award.

"One milieu of nominated films is that they're long," said public relations guru Michael Levine. "If your ass is sore by the end of the movie, then it'll probably do well at the Academy."

Based on F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1921 short story of the same name, "Button" does not disguise that its intentions are to leave no dry eye in the theater. While in Fitzgerald's story, Benjamin becomes bored with his aging wife and leaves her to spend many nights alone, Fincher's Benjamin only leaves so as not to be a burden on her as he grows younger.

Eschewing any degree of selfishness in the lead character and replacing it with Benjamin's innocent growth makes Fincher's message -- the big picture of Life -- hard to swallow for some.

"I was underwhelmed," said Alexa Dedlow, a consultant at Interscope Records' TV and film division. "The film was trying throughout to be sentimental, especially at the end when the baby (Benjamin) died. They really wanted to make you cry, but to me, it was all just a bit weird."

There's no escaping the so-called Ick Factor in "Button." Evident throughout, especially when the woman who raises Benjamin -- overplayed by Taraji Henson -- is on screen, it crescendos in the closing moments when a hummingbird, burdened with significance throughout the film, hits a hospital window. Cue tears from some, the rolling of eyes from others.

"It's hard to suspend belief when the deformed old man becomes the most beautifully chiseled man in the world (Pitt) and in the next scene gets acne," Dedlow told ABC News. "I understand he's going from older to younger, but the ugly to beautiful transition wasn't exactly conducive to likeability."